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Despite not being held in the highest esteem by "hardcore" Final Fantasy fans (hate on, haters), I thoroughly, and unapologetically love VII. RPGs had never really struck my fancy, save for a carefree, childhood jaunt through the world of A Bard's Tale on PC. Yet after an initial bout of "Jesus f*cking Christ, I'm bored," VII had be in its digital clutches - thus beginning my lifelong love of the Final Fantasy series.

Even with the oft-repeated criticisms of the game - "Emo boy" Cloud, Sephiroth and his endless "mommy issues," as well as the fundamentally loathsome Yuffie - VII was my proper introduction to the genre, and showed that video games could be more than simply a bit of casual fun, or a cathartic mowing down of enemy after enemy. They could, in fact, serve as proper avenues for storytelling.

Thus, it was welcome to hear, late last week, that VII is making its return to the PC - and as an added bonus, my "grandpa computer" will be able to handle its rather modest system requirements. Available exclusively through Square Enix, the game will be tricked out with 36 achievements, as well as support for cloud saves. Also included will be the "Character Booster" feature, allowing you to "increase your HP, MP and Gil levels to their maximum, all with the simple click of a button." Previously, some gamers and news sites had taken this as evidence of a microstransaction-based option which, at the risk of going to a tirade, I hate with a passion that reduces the fires of Hell itself to the modest, fleeting flicker of a dying candle. Now, a Square Enix representative has revealed to Kotaku's Jason Schreler that "will not cost real money to use [...] We'll have final pricing info on the game to share soon, but we can confirm that there will be no microtransactions for the upcoming rerelease of Final Fantasy VII on PC."

So for those interesting in VII's return to the PC, check the Final Fantasy VII PC homepage for more, and check out the system requirements after the jump!

10 Comments

Despite not being held in the highest esteem by "hardcore" Final Fantasy fans #hate on, haters#
Woah, Really? I guess you mean the FF VI/IV wuz teh best!1! crowd but most people I've heard still seem to regard it as the best...the Cloud hate is all retroactive. People liked him back in the day, he wasn't seen as 'emo' #not that people used that word back then#...there's actually a good article about people's changing perception of Cloud-the way people went from seeing him as a badass yet emotional #or something# character to a whiny p*ssy emo Luke Skywalker. Actually...did people hate Luke back in the day?
Regardless I'm proud to have finally found the one other person on the planet who hates that bastion of idiocy Yuffie. Why is a twelve year old boy pretending to be a girl-okay she's a girl; in short shorts who is apparently a "ninja" because Japan has long forgotten what a ninja is-how does that fit into a steampunk sci-fi world? And WHY did she get to be in KH 1 and 2 and not Barrett or Tifa? WHHHHHHY?

Yeah, i don't quite get the achievements thing... i mean, at all. Perhaps it's an age thing, but having a video game give me a digital thumbs up over killing 12 enemies in a row with melee attacks doesn't exactly give me a sense of... well... achievement.

@MercuryWater

The "retroactive" criticism is indeed what i was referring to. Yeah, back in the day, i didn't notice it, but it seems to come up quite a bit when discussing VII.

And Yuffie... oh dear. I'll forever have a sort of soft spot for her, only because i met my bff when she was cosplaying (rather convincingly) as Yuffie (i chalk it up to the two of them having the same body type), but she was definitely the height of Square's "annoying teenage girl" archetype.

Tifa was in kingdom hearts 2, taken from KH wiki: "When Sora's revisits Hollow Bastion for the first time, he meets Tifa, who inspects Ansem the Wise's study, looking for "a guy with spiky hair." Sora pulls on one of his own spikes before Tifa laughs and says "Spikier"."

As for Yuffie in KH, "Yuffie's role was originally filled by Rikku, but due to the fact that there was already a major character named Riku in the series, they decided to replace her with Yuffie. Traces of Rikku's intended attire remain on Yuffie during Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. By Kingdom Hearts II, Yuffie wore the clothing she had on in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children."

I'm just saddened to see how everything needs to be dumbed down and made tacky for the current generation of players.

Apart from the whole pointless achievements, but, stat boosters? Save anywhere? Are the gamers now really that weak and incapable of finishing the game at least once, without even tackling the optional stuff like Ruby and Emerald Weapon? Sure, at times it was frustrating when you couldn't beat a boos, and you did have to grind the levels or limit breaks, but damn, the sense of achievement when you finally reached that step where you could beat it. . . . Bye, bye now I'll just save every 5 minutes. Heaven forbid I use an elixir by mistake.

Sorry if I sound too harsh, but it kinda sux for me to see a game that I personally hold very dear, being treated in such a half-assed way.

SE should next give us a button to resurrect Aeris (Aerith, depending which version you played). . . .

I have to disagree with your comment about saving anywhere. I beat this game multiple times as a teenager, but I had plenty of time. I have a hard time sitting and playing games that don't let you save anywhere because I simply don't have to time to do that anymore. Besides, if I remember correctly, I remember saving myself into a couple of hard spots. I didn't grind the first time I played through the game, and I didn't want to waste my money. I inadvertently made the game harder because I never upgraded equipment and never spent money on items. When I saved right before a boss fight with little HP and no items to heal myself and the option of turning backed looked just as risky, there were times where I would have liked to be able to die and return to the exit.

Still, it would be great if they added a hard mode and relocalized it.

Oops at the Tifa comment...
Before KH 2 was released, players were promised "the entire cast of FF 7". Didn't get them. I was just always annoyed that the characters we'd seen reimaged before returned-Yuffie whhhhy-instead of new versions of Final Fantasy characters like Terra, or Zidane or Reno #or whomever else#. Not that it matters much...

I'd agree that the whole "Cloud being emo" issue was more something that happened more retroactively than at the time.

Broadly speaking, I think he was initially considered to be much more of a badass, but that interpretation got watered down by the near-endless stream of fanart and fanfic portraying him as more of a typical emo type. This wasn't helped by the series serving up more and more straight-up emo boys, making Cloud seem like the granddaddy of them all due to FF7 being the first in that generation of Square RPGs. Then to put the tin lid on it, the Cloud that came back in Advent Children and all the other spin-offs was one much more obviously influenced by all that stuff that had come since.

That's not even getting into what they did to Sephiroth. I had some very fond memories of FF7, but fan-pandering has a lot to answer for regarding what it's become since.

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